MADELINE:  (a slight start, as she realizes the pause.  As one recalled from far) I’m sorry.  I was listening to what you were saying—­but all the time—­something else was happening.  Grandfather Morton, big and—­oh, terrible.  He was here.  And we went to that walled-up hole in the ground—­(rising and pointing down at the chalked cell)—­where they keep Fred Jordan on bread and water because he couldn’t be a part of nations of men killing each other—­and Silas Morton—­only he was all that is back of us, tore open that cell—­it was his voice tore it open—­his voice as he cried, ‘God damn you, this is America!’ (sitting down, as if rallying from a tremendous experience) I’m sorry—­it should have happened, while you were speaking.  Won’t you—­go on?

HOLDEN:  That’s a pretty hard thing to go on against. (after a moment) I can’t go on.

MADELINE:  You were thinking of leaving the college, and then—­decided to stay? (he nods) And you feel there’s more—­fullness of life for you inside the college than outside?

HOLDEN:  No—­not exactly. (again a pause) It’s very hard for me to talk to you.

MADELINE:  (gently) Perhaps we needn’t do it.

HOLDEN:  (something in him forcing him to say it) I’m staying for financial reasons.

MADELINE:  (kind, but not going to let the truth get away) You don’t think that—­having to stay within—­or deciding to, rather, makes you think these things of the—­blight of being without?

HOLDEN:  I think there is danger to you in—­so young, becoming alien to society.

MADELINE:  As great as the danger of staying within—­and becoming like the thing I’m within?

HOLDEN:  You wouldn’t become like it.

MADELINE:  Why wouldn’t I?  That’s what it does to the rest of you.  I don’t see it—­this fullness of life business.  I don’t see that Uncle Felix has got it—­or even Aunt Isabel, and you—­I think that in buying it you’re losing it.

HOLDEN:  I don’t think you know what a cruel thing you are saying.

MADELINE:  There must be something pretty rotten about Morton College if you have to sell your soul to stay in it!

HOLDEN:  You don’t ‘sell your soul’.  You persuade yourself to wait.

MADELINE:  (unable to look at him, as if feeling shame) You have had a talk with Uncle Felix since that day in the library you stepped aside for me to pass.

HOLDEN:  Yes; and with my wife’s physician.  If you sell your soul—­it’s to love you sell it.

MADELINE:  (low) That’s strange.  It’s love that—­brings life along, and then it’s love—­holds life back.

HOLDEN:  (and all the time with this effort against hopelessness) Leaving me out of it, I’d like to see you give yourself a little more chance for detachment.  You need a better intellectual equipment if you’re going to fight the world you find yourself in.  I think you will count for more if you wait, and when you strike, strike more maturely.